The Embodiment of Insight

The Embodiment of Insight

Comedian and transformational speaker Kyle Cease discusses why he thinks fear is so funny and how expressing emotions is key to personal transformation.

Omega: Which love came first for you: love for comedy or love for personal transformation?

Kyle: Comedy is what I did first, but I never saw comedy or personal transformation as something I should pursue as much as it was just a part of me.

When I was starting out as a comedian (as a young child), people would say to me, "One day, you're going to be famous." And I would think, "I'm already featured in the yearbook and I'm on public access, and I'm doing open mic at comedy clubs. I'm the most famous person here."

I didn't understand this "one day you'll be" thing. I'm here right now. If you're thinking "I'm going to be really fit soon," you never will be because you're always thinking of it as later, versus "I'm fit now," or "I'm funny now."

Omega: How did you discover that you could combine comedy and transformation?

Kyle: I believe that when you let go of something that doesn't feel like it aligns with you anymore, you make room for amazing new things to happen. I had completed my excitement of stand-up comedy. I had two Comedy Central specials. I performed at more than 1,000 colleges. I had headlined almost every club in the country. Something in me felt it ran its course and it was done.

But it was scary to let go of being a stand-up comic because it was something that was giving me results. It was something that helped me get external love. One day, I just decided that I was officially done doing comedy clubs on the road. In letting go of what I used to be, I was so much more connected to my heart. My heart said, "What if I combine comedy and transformation?"

I remember my mind saying, "Well, no one's ever done that." And my heart said, "Yeah, no one's ever done that the way that I'm doing it, at least. It would be amazing and maybe something that the world could use even more."

That was when I also started learning that every reason you think you can't do something is the reason you have to.

When people tell me, I have kids. I say right, "That's the reason you have to live and you have to show them that they can." Or people say, "I’d love to go fly to Italy and just write a book, Kyle, but I have to make money." Right, you're not making money because you're not writing your book. You're not living from your heart.

For me, it was a matter of letting go of the idea of comedy and opening a new place where I could combine things that I couldn't have done when I was in my head as much. My heart said, “Just bring every element of you into what you do.” So, I feel it's all a by-product of my connection to myself.

Omega: What habit or trait about yourself do you find funny?

Kyle: Everything is funny, and I'll get to me in a second, but we live in a world of people who think that they're very temporary and life is this big deal. We shift the second we realize we’re completely infinite and it’s not that big of a deal. You're the most powerful, infinite thing ever seen and…who cares.

In other words, step into it and don't act like it's the most dramatic thing in the world. It's amazing that you can play that much and that you can be that free whether it’s in a presentation for your company or on a date.

Life is hilarious. For me, I think my ego is really funny. One thing that I think is so hilarious is fear. Fear is when you create a thought and then you freak out from the thought you created. So you think, what if they don't like me? And then you freak out.

That's like drawing a picture of a monster and then forgetting you drew it and putting it on your wall and then freaking out every night before you go to sleep. But it was your idea in the first place.

Omega: How do you handle times that you feel blocked or uncreative?

Kyle: Michael Beckwith taught me to ask this question, whenever I feel blocked: "What's trying to emerge out of me?"

I know that the block is not the blockage of me, it's the blockage of my old story. It's the blockage of the paradigm that I believed about how life was supposed to be. When I feel blocked, I know that I'm about to go deeper and find a truer me by identifying and releasing the lie that something should be this way or I was supposed to have this thing happen this way. I shift to find compassion for that part of me that needed something to be a certain way to be happy.

I really believe that the biggest lie we live is this idea that when something happens, I’ll be happy. When the world finally figures it out, when we get a different president, when the right person comes into my life, or when I have a million dollars, then I’ll be happy.

We all believe those things will make us happy. I've been really lucky because I have achieved many of the things that I thought would make me happy. I was lucky because they taught me that it was a lie. The truth is, when I'm happy, things will happen.

By happy, I mean okay with yourself in every emotion.

Are you letting yourself cry? Are you letting yourself feel? That blockage has nothing to do with what someone did to you. It has to do with being able to access a level of darkness in yourself that you’ve always been running from. Now, you have an opportunity to love it and face it. Because the light you emit is measured only on how much of your darkness you accept.

Omega: Can you say more about how accepting emotions is central to transformation?

Kyle: It's very easy to just say, "I'm scared," "I'm nervous," or "I'm lost." We have a belief that those feelings aren't okay and that we need to present something different to the world.

And just by saying, "I'm lost," you actually create room for new ideas to come in. Just by saying, "I don't understand," or "I'm confused," and being okay with that and not trying to fix it immediately, you make space for something new.

Imagine if you're lost, instead of finding your way, you just fall in love with being lost. You just say, "I don't know and I love that." "I don't get this and I love that." Imagine feeling that expansion right there. "I'm having anxiety and I love that." "I'm nervous and I love that."

If you say what you feel, you attract people who are in touch with their feelings and are a much higher vibration for you and those people can expand your life because they're in their same heart. If you deny your feelings, you can only align with other people who deny their feelings. And you'll be stuck. You'll be a people pleaser and you'll attract a taker or something like that.

When you actually own your feelings, you make space for them to be released and you make space for incredible things to happen.